Colin Farrell plays a broken man trying to make sense of an unfair world in ‘Dumbo’

Ed Symkus More Content Now

Wednesday

Mar 20, 2019 at 11:05 AMMar 20, 2019 at 11:05 AM

It doesn’t seem very fair - or accurate - that Colin Farrell has come to be best known, in some circles, as a tough guy sort of actor, in others for doing action roles. Sure, he’s played a few of those. He was a psychopath in “Seven Psychopaths,” a horrible boss in “Horrible Bosses,” the villain in “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” and Alexander the Great in “Alexander.” But the Dublin native has also regularly shown a very different, extremely vulnerable side. He was a recovering alcoholic in “Ondine,” a lovelorn lost soul in “The Lobster,” and a meek, desperate father trying to keep his family safe in “The Killing of a Sacred Deer.”

In “Dumbo,” the live-action Tim Burton-directed Disney remake of the classic Disney cartoon, Farrell again goes for that latter type of character. He plays Holt Farrier, a Kentucky horseman who’s half of a trick riding team with his wife in the small Medici Bros. Circus. The couple raises two kids who travel with the circus, but Holt leaves to fight in WWI. At war’s end, his wife has succumbed to the flu, the circus is seeing hard times, and the owner has sold all of the horses. One other thing: A war injury has left Holt minus an arm, and his young kids don’t know about this till he returns home. He is indeed a broken man. But amid this emotional turmoil, the movie is also about a flying elephant who is separated from his mom.

Farrell, 42, cheery and laidback, recently spoke about the film and his career in Los Angeles.

Q. How did you become part of the “Dumbo” family?A. I heard those three words: Tim, Burton, Dumbo, and I was done, man. It was sign me up. I sent Tim a very long-winded email about how much I loved his work and how strongly I felt about certain aspects of this film and the message that I felt was going to be a through-line in it. And that was it, really.

Q. Any second thoughts about remaking such an iconic movie?A. Not really. I never saw it when I was a kid so I had no nostalgic attachment to it. But I did see the film about three months before I got on the plane to London, and I thought it was great. I thought it was moving and disturbing, and I thought all the elements of darkness and hope that existed in that 1941 animated film also existed in our version. But now there was this whole human component, this whole other aspect that wasn’t in the original. I thought the human component of the story mirrors Dumbo’s journey in a really beautiful way. Children lose their parents in three ways in this film. My kids lose their mom as a result of sickness. My kids lose me, briefly, for two years, as a result of having to go off and fight the war. And Dumbo, as a child, loses his mother as a result of forced separation.

Q. Holt comes home from war at the beginning of the film and finds himself in a terrible situation. Could you talk about what might be going on in his head?A. When we meet him, he’s a damaged man, a broken man - both physically, as represented by the absence of his left arm, which he lost in battle - and he’s also broken emotionally and psychologically. He’s grieving for his wife who is no longer in the world waiting for him. He has two children that he feels disenfranchised from. He doesn’t understand them, they don’t understand or recognize the man that was their father in him. His struggle is very real. Like many characters in this film, he feels at odds with his environment and with the things that should be important to him in his life.

Q. Yet there’s a positive feeling throughout the film that things just might work out for him, and for the kids and Dumbo.A. Yeah, my character’s journey is really one towards reconciliation between him and his kids, and him learning to understand that it’s OK to just set back and let them be children, that he doesn’t have to inflict the woes of the world on them. Because, guess what! The world will do that for them.

Q. Is it true that before acting, you wanted to be a professional soccer player?A. That’s right, until I was about 14 or 15. My dad was a professional football player, soccer player. I played avidly from the time I was about 5 until I was 14, nearly every day of the week, but I just didn’t want it enough. I did love the game. I do love the game. But I didn’t want it enough to proceed.

Q. When you turned to acting, was there a moment when you realized you made the right decision?A. The version of that moment for me was kind of self-generated. It was the first acting class I ever did. I was 16. I was in a dance studio in Dublin with four or five other students, and we had an incredible teacher called Conal Kearney. The first class we did I had to get up in front of everyone and do the Cliffs Notes of my life: When I was born, a little bit about my parents. And I remember feeling this sense of nervousness and tension, but also a great liberation. I left the class and afterward, I had so much feeling! I was stirred! It wasn’t that I felt great or anything else. No, I was stirred! And I still am to this day.

“Dumbo” opens on March 29.Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now. He can be reached at esymkus@rcn.com.